Philly four-piece Wail released their self-titled debut (review here) on Translation Loss in July. Hot summer nights ensued, peppered with their instrumentalist jazz-funk-whathaveyou sound that was jammy and exploratory but spoke just the same of a master plan at work, even if said plan was to get in the studio and figure it all out later. That may well be what they did. Their first video, for “Astronomy” (premiered here) — and yes, I reused the picture; I think they only have one so far — seemed to show that in action, as it was the band making their way through the song, playing it live and recording the finished version as it happened. An admirable execution of ethic toward capturing a live sound by — wait for it — capturing a live sound.

The clip premiering below for “Symmetry” takes a different approach.

I’ll spare you the seasonal spiel (or maybe I won’t, but it’s a different spiel). I’m not a Halloween guy. Truth told, I’ve never really been one for fun. I’m the kind of person, you might say, who’ll readily spend 12-plus years of his life sitting in front of a keyboard writing about bands rather than engage in what most would consider regular human interaction. Dressing up? Spiders and skulls? Are they on a black t-shirt with a band logo? No? Then keep ’em. The holiday I care about most is my wife’s birthday, followed by my anniversary. Nonetheless, it’s October now and as regards Halloween, ’tis the season. Even for us miserable-shit, lazy-eyed blogger types.

Not big on horror movies either, but you know what? Evil Dead — the whole trilogy — frickin’ rules. And somebody put work into this clip setting the rhythm of the cuts to the song and taking footage from Sam Raimi’s 1981 original Evil Dead movie and constructing a genuine music video from it. I especially like the winding record player timed to the little guitar noodles throughout, and the way the Deadite trying to get up from the basement is set to the most intense part of the track. It actually works really well. And man, Bruce Campbell looks like a baby. He was 23 when that movie was made; I just looked it up. Wow.

So anyhow, if you’re into Halloween or you’re not, I hereby give you and me both permission to enjoy this video for what it is. Maybe when it’s over you stream the whole album.

Have fun. It’ll be okay:

Wail, “Symmetry” video premiere

The new video “Symmetry” by Philadelphia band WAIL.

Featuring Calvin Weston on drums, Pete Wilder and Yanni Papadopoulos on guitar, Alexi Papadopoulos on bass.

Order link: https://orcd.co/wail

Yanni Papadopoulos: guitar
Alexi Papadopoulos: bass
Pete Wilder: guitar
Grant Calvin Weston: drums

Wail, Wail (2021)

Wail on Facebook

Wail on Bandcamp

Translation Loss Records on Facebook

Translation Loss Records on Instagram

Translation Loss Records website

Translation Loss Records webstore

Tags: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, self-titled, Translation Loss Records, Wail, Wail Self-titled

This entry was posted on Friday, October 8th, 2021 at 9:35 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.